As another school year begins, the debate over homework continues. For years now, there have been heated arguments between those who see excessive amounts of homework taking a toll on the physical and mental health of our teenagers versus those who proclaim the need for students to do even more work at home if we’re to be competitive globally. Some educators, like Alfie Kohn, question the efficacy of most homework; in fact, he says that much more than ten minutes times the number of a student’s grade level, on any night, is actually counterproductive. Others point to our failing education systems and a dumbing down of standards, as evidenced by a reduction in the amount of homework teachers assign, as significant reasons that the United States seems to be falling further and further behind other countries. However, maybe the problem here is that, as in other cases, we’re asking the wrong questions.
Focusing on the quantity of homework means we don’t have to concentrate on the quality of work we’re asking our students to do outside of school. Many times I have seen students completely absorbed in the work they have been assigned; I have even heard students say, “I enjoyed last night’s homework.” A former colleague of mine from another school created a Wiki-group, which is like a chat room, among his students and assigned them Supreme Court cases to study and debate. Eventually, he had to impose a curfew on his students and tell them that they could not send their peers a rebuttal after midnight; had he not done so, the eighth graders would have stayed up all night arguing the merits of Marbury vs. Madison or Plessy vs. Ferguson. Last year, I watched one of my own sons spend hours preparing for a debate on Chinese philosophers for his ninth grade history class, and he never complained.
On the other hand, I have heard students describe a fifteen-minute homework assignment as tedious, dreadful, and worthless. Imagine how they felt about the longer assignments! My father used to describe a restaurant by saying that, “The food was not very good, but at least they gave you a lot of it.” Unfortunately, this all too often describes the kind of assignments educators give their students to do at home.
When I was a younger teacher, I used to pride myself on the overwhelming amount of homework I assigned because I believed that it showed how demanding a teacher I was. While I may have been correct in saying that I was demanding, what was I really asking of them? Was I requiring the students to do work that asked them to process interesting and important information, giving them time to think about, and internalize what they had learned or were they merely jumping through the hoops I placed in front of them? I would like to think I was intellectually challenging them, but looking back, I am not completely sure.
Not only is assigning more and more homework preventing our students from getting enough sleep, but perhaps it’s even detrimental to their learning at school. If the primary purposes of homework are to enhance classroom learning and/or to prepare students for the new information they will encounter in class the next day, their resulting lack of sleep due to excessive homework may be, in fact, countering what we initially hoped to achieve. A recent story on National Public Radio states, “’What we learned is that when kids cram, particularly at the expense of sleep, the next day they're more likely to have academic problems even though they spent more time studying that night,’ explains researcher Andrew Fuligni of UCLA.” While this may sound like common sense, we continue piling on more and more work and many students compliantly continue doing it at their own risk. Story linked here. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/21/159435167/high-school-daze-the-perils-of-sacrificing-sleep-for-late-night-studying?sc=tw
Don’t get me wrong. As a teacher and as an administrator, I support the assigning of meaningful work outside of class. Doing so can solidify new concepts covered in a class discussion or set the context for an exciting discussion the next day. In addition, there is no way that students can read everything they need without some work being done outside of school. Also, repetition for a language or math class can serve the same function as rehearsals for a play or performance or practice for a sporting event.
Interestingly enough, some students recently asked me if we had ever considered lengthening the school day by a few hours and not have homework. While this may not be feasible now, I find it interesting that it was the students who said that they would rather be at school longer and do more work here than have to do their homework in isolation. It’s not that they’re trying to get out of work; they realize that there’s much to learn, but they often feel ground down by the work they’re having to do at home. They may also find school less distracting than being at home and feel they can be more productive here.
At a time when many adults are trying to find ways to better coordinate the demands of their professional and their personal lives, should we be surprised that our students are looking for the same thing? If we acknowledge that some of the work we do in school consists of teaching young men and young women how to lead lives that are interesting and balanced, do we need to re-think our view that homework is inherently good and the more of it we give, the better it is for our students? What do you think?
